Hunger kills 3.1m children every year – report

Nearly 800,000 people across more than 50 developing countries are suffering from hunger, with violent conflicts and instability being named among the main causes.However, the situation has improved somewhat since last year, according to the new Global Hunger Index report.

Some 795 million people are struggling with hunger, with one in nine people worldwide malnourished and nearly 3.1 million child deaths per year, said the Global Hunger Index report, released jointly on Monday by German charitable organization, Welthungerhilfe, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and Concern Worldwide.

The Central African Republic and Chad, where people have long suffered from instability and violent conflicts, claimed first places on the list. “Conflict and hunger are closely connected,” says the report.

“More than 80 percent of those affected by armed conflict stay within their countries. They are the ones who suffer most from severe food insecurity,” said Barbel Dieckmann, Welthungerhilfe president. “We need to do more to support these people and to help restore their livelihoods. However, unless we address the root causes of armed conflict, the progress made in reducing hunger will not last.”

Zambia, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Madagascar, Afghanistan, Niger and Yemen round out up the list of the 10 countries most affected by hunger in 2015. The conditions there have been labeled as “serious” and “alarming.”

Eritrea, Burundi and Sudan, which caused concerns last year, are not on the list this year since there has been no data provided about malnutrition there across 2015.

Countries such as Angola, Ethiopia and Rwanda have seen a significant drop in hunger levels since the 1990s and 2000s, when the political situation stabilized.

The report also highlighted the fact that “calamitous famines,” which killed more than one million people, have ended.

“Conflict does not necessarily lead to hunger. The age of calamitous famines is over. Today… global hunger is increasingly a result of the decisions we make,” said Alex de Waal, author of the report and executive director of the World Peace Foundation and research professor at Tufts University says in a press-release.

The good news is that in as many as 17 countries including Brazil, Kyrgyzstan, Peru and Croatia, the malnutrition level has plummeted by 50 percent while the world hunger level in general has gone down by 27 percent.

The report issued this year for the tenth time is aimed at raising awareness of the problem of starvation in the world, with charity organizations looking for sustainable ways of putting poverty and hunger to an end.